#Luanda hydrated
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I’d like to share with you a revealing experience I had yesterday as I was reading HuffPo. I just published a piece there calling for a transition away from “development” as it has been traditionally imposed by the wealthy countries onto the rest of the world. I also suggested that there are alternatives to growth.
Anyway, I was scanning the front page and, seeing that my post was relegated to the inner pages of the site, felt… relief! Now why would I feel that?
I think part of the reason is that what I am saying contradicts not only the dominant neoliberal economics, but also the closely held truisms of the dissident, liberal economists who are championing the transition to “sustainable growth.” My article is vulnerable to being derided as naive or ignorant, because it implicitly rejects assumptions about civilization that are considered unquestionable.
I can imagine a critic thinking, “Doesn’t Eisenstein realize that it is economic growth that has liberated millions of people from agrarian toil, illiteracy, and short lifespans?” Or, “Doesn’t Eisenstein understand that we can keep growing by replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy, and by ephemeralizing and miniaturizing production and growing the service economy?” It really takes a whole book to deconstruct those narratives (which is why I did write a book :)). A 800-word article can’t do that. I feel a little protected by its obscurity.
My dilemma in writing for mainstream publications is this: If one is drawing from assumptions that the readership takes for granted, it is easy to say something that sounds sensible in 800 words. If one is writing from a different paradigm, a lot more groundwork is necessary to establish that one is not a crackpot or a fool.
Let me offer an example of another time I felt exposed. Years and years ago, we tried the experiment of putting one of my sons into a charter school. On Parents’ Night I visited his classroom and listened while the teacher spent nearly the whole session talking about “behavior management.” She was up to date on the latest techniques, and the parents were quite impressed – all except for me, that s. I was appalled. I said, “Maybe if the children were doing things that naturally engaged their attention, we wouldn’t have to be managing their behavior all the time.” It was as if someone had farted in the room. A couple moments of embarrassed silence, then the discussion resumed as if nothing had happened. But later one or two parents told me they appreciated what I’d said. “We are a bit uncomfortable with all this behavior management stuff too,” they said, “but we couldn’t put our finger on it.”
Anyway, if you take for granted the desirability of making children learn things they don’t really want to learn, and of training them to be docile in the face of authority, then behavior management is indispensable, and anyone who questions it is an idiot.
Another thing that came up as I read the HuffPo was the feeling, “I don’t belong here. These are not my people. This is not my tribe. The reality that these narratives define, is not my reality.”: But I am learning that these feelings are nearly universal, albeit buried more deeply in some people than in others. In other words, maybe they ARE my tribe, and maybe my lifelong feelings of alienation stem just as much from my own postures as they do from any fundamental difference.
On some level I know: we are all in this together. That is why I am not giving up too easily in my forays into mainstream media. I am trying to imbue my writing, even when I’m critiquing something like the SDGs, with a spirit of gentleness and humor, because these ARE my people, all of them, and the path forward for our civilization is not via identifying some as opponents and defeating them once and for all.
I hope that gentleness and humor is visible in this article without compromising its critique of what I think is a poisonous concept.
—
Facebook post by Charles Eisenstein
And I can recommend reading the article he has written that he is referring to.
Mr. Eisenstein is probably one of the few people living today that truly inspires me. He is thoughtful and always questions his own actions. I never get the sense that he is trying to maintain a false image of himself for the sake some ideal. He even questions the very ideals that drive him in his work towards a better world. I highly recommend reading his book “Sacred Economics”. While you can buy it in paperback form it is also freely available as an ebook via a free download from his website.
